The technical matter discussed herein is highly specialized and technically detailed in nature. One skilled in the art is familiar with this technology, the terminology, and the specifications for such. For those unfamiliar with the technology and the terminology an excellent starting point is the publicly available standards which may be found at http://www.rapidio.org/home. The RapidIO Specification 2.1 is a good standard to review as it is succinct in nature and easily understood by one of skill in the art, and is hereby incorporated by reference.
Error rate plays one of the most important roles in quantifying overall system performance in communication systems. In particular in RapidIO based products for long-reach serial links running at or higher than 6.25 Gbaud it is very important.
Gigahertz signaling rates require multiple disciplines for successful operation, including careful attention to board layout, clocking, and power. The S-RIO (serial rapid input output) Gen-2 switches (also denoted sRIO Gen2 Switch) can achieve bit error rates of 1E-15 using default transmit pre-emphasis and receive equalization coefficient settings over short- and medium-reach channels, as defined by the RapidIO Specification (Rev. 2.1), Part 6 (referred to ad Gen 2 standard).
For long reach (100 cm) channels with link rate higher than 5 GBaud (for example, 6.25 GBaud or higher long-reach channel) the received signal degrades significantly due to ISI (inter symbol interference) resulting from excessive reflection, attenuation and channel delay. In addition, channel imperfections may vary over time due to changes in temperature and voltage and the fixed coefficient settings are not sufficient to compensate for these various imperfections. This presents a technical problem which needs a technical solution.